Although today was a really great day, filled with great discussion and seeing very interesting sights, I did not get to go to church, which was disappointing. I was really hoping to be able to visit a ward in China. I will definitely get my chances this year, though. I have a feeling that I will be in China more times than I would like.
Today - Jack and I visited Hong Kong and it was actually very entertaining. We asked our Taxi driver to drop us off at the "Big Buddha". Well - he had no idea what he was doing and he dropped us off in some random place in the center of Hong Kong. It was already pretty late - it took nearly 2.5 hours to get from Shenzhen to Hong Kong due to the large delay at customs. Luckily, we found a tourist information desk and we got the info that we needed. We pulled some cash from the ATM and then we took the metro to the Cable Car stop - then we jumped on a cool glass-bottom gondola and took the ride up to see the big Buddha. It was really an incredible experience. Here are some photos:
Above is a photo of the downtown financial district from the far side of the river. We spent a little time in the evening enjoying this view. Too bad it was very foggy (or should I say smoggy)...
This was a fun street sculpture.
Glass bottom in our Gondola - very cool, but not quite as cool as I thought it would be.
The cable car ride was actually very long! They have a hiking path where you can hike to the top if you want. I imagine that it would be a pretty rough hike, but it would be good exercise - probably about 4 miles one-way. Lot's of hills, though!
Finally, after 3 transfer stations to change directions, the Big Buddha came into view. It's actually pretty incredible how large this statue is - also a little crazy that this is such an important part of worship for many people. I'm sure others think that our temples are a little crazy as well! Again - I didn't get to go to church today, but I spent a bunch of time reflecting on my beliefs and my faith - it was very spiritual and important to me.
Finally, at the top, there's a little village and a row of shopping for tourists. We spent about 1.5 hours enjoying this part of the trip. We saw a 5-D movie (lame) and we did the "walk with Buddha", which was cool as it gave us a little insight into the beliefs of budists. For lunch, we ate at this little place - it was named much better than it tasted, but it wasn't bad!
I will write a separate post about the walking with Buddha experience so that I can limit the # of photos to include.
Almost as cool as the big Buddha was the monastery. They were burning some serious incense and it was pretty fun to watch and experience. The best part was the 10,000 buddha's hall. The place is only 3 months old - it was in construction for 8 years and cost 400M HK dollars. There are literally 10,820 buddha's in the place. Most incredible is that the 5 in the certain are said to be made of solid gold! (I have a hard time believing that - they would be worth a fortune). The place was really neat though.
The hike up to the Buddha, over 250 stairs, was a real workout. I actually filmed it and it was pretty fun. I will say that I was a bit tired at the top. Here are a few photos from the top:
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